I was meditating today and noticed quite some over-effort happening. So I did the diligent, spiritually respectable thing: I located it in the body — "pain in my forehead" — and decided to stay with it. I even felt a small glow of pride for remembering to find it somatically instead of getting lost on the mental level.
What happened was quite disappointing: the headache locked into my attention, intensified steadily, and after a few minutes of escalating suffering I gave up and went to do something else.
I think this is a common way to misread the instruction be with what is. The mind notices something, names it — "pain," "tension," "sadness," "shame" — and then sincerely tries to stay with that. But now it is no longer staying with the living felt sense. It is staying with a conceptually frozen version: the brain's reconstruction of what this label is supposed to feel like.
Before a feeling can ease and release, it has to be allowed to move — to shapeshift freely. One moment it's an emotion, then it vanishes, then it reappears as pressure in the head, then as something else entirely. That, I think, is why Gendlin emphasized the intermediate handles on the felt sense that don't feel quite right yet: unless you're receiving those, you're not going to receive the truly relaxing shift. Without this intermediate aliveness, Focusing or meditative work with feelings tends to stall.
If, on the other hand, you notice it is stalling — the feeling has become fixed, static, stubbornly the same — that's worth treating as a signal. Something is interfering: a concerned part, a Buddhist hindrance, over-effort, aggressive awareness. Something worth investigating on its own terms.
A little exercise from me: Next time you do Focusing, IFS, or sit with a feeling in meditation — watch carefully what happens right after you name it. Does the naming make it more stuck, because now you have a more particular object to grip? Or was the word just a momentary touch that didn't disturb the feeling's natural unfolding?
I was meditating today and noticed quite some over-effort happening. So I did the diligent, spiritually respectable thing: I located it in the body — "pain in my forehead" — and decided to stay with it. I even felt a small glow of pride for remembering to find it somatically instead of getting lost on the mental level.
What happened was quite disappointing: the headache locked into my attention, intensified steadily, and after a few minutes of escalating suffering I gave up and went to do something else.
I think this is a common way to misread the instruction be with what is. The mind notices something, names it — "pain," "tension," "sadness," "shame" — and then sincerely tries to stay with that. But now it is no longer staying with the living felt sense. It is staying with a conceptually frozen version: the brain's reconstruction of what this label is supposed to feel like.
Before a feeling can ease and release, it has to be allowed to move — to shapeshift freely. One moment it's an emotion, then it vanishes, then it reappears as pressure in the head, then as something else entirely. That, I think, is why Gendlin emphasized the intermediate handles on the felt sense that don't feel quite right yet: unless you're receiving those, you're not going to receive the truly relaxing shift. Without this intermediate aliveness, Focusing or meditative work with feelings tends to stall.
If, on the other hand, you notice it is stalling — the feeling has become fixed, static, stubbornly the same — that's worth treating as a signal. Something is interfering: a concerned part, a Buddhist hindrance, over-effort, aggressive awareness. Something worth investigating on its own terms.
A little exercise from me: Next time you do Focusing, IFS, or sit with a feeling in meditation — watch carefully what happens right after you name it. Does the naming make it more stuck, because now you have a more particular object to grip? Or was the word just a momentary touch that didn't disturb the feeling's natural unfolding?
Good luck with your practice!